As some have suspected, His Grace has been moving this way for some time. His camel’s back has been burdened for about a year, and two straws finally broke it: women bishops are as un-Catholic as a binding covenant is un-Anglican. There is a need for a narrower definition of Anglican belief in order to block Anglican clergy from pursuing liberal and potentially divisive policies, and it is clear that this may be found only in the Ordinariate under the aegis of Papal authority. The supreme law of the Church is the salvation of souls. As such, throughout its history, the Church has always found the pastoral and juridical means to care for the good of the faithful. With the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, promulgated on 4th November 2009, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, provided for the establishment of Personal ordinariates through which Anglican faithful may enter, even in a corporate manner, into full communion with the Catholic Church. This was both generously ecumenical and ecclesially prophetic. Over recent years, Roman Catholics have begun to understand Catholic-minded Anglicans a lot better, and so His Grace finally decided to join his fellow bishops – now monsignors – and erstwhile vicars – now priests – in the joyous and generous fellowship created by His Holiness, and was finally received into full communion at Westminster Cathedral on Sunday 13 March 2011. On that glorious day, His Grace joined 847 adults from 144 parishes in the Diocese of Westminster who took the penultimate step in their journey to become Catholics by taking part in the 2011 ‘Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion of Candidates’.
This really was a difficult choice, not least because of what His Grace has endured at the behest and hands of some of Rome’s more unpleasant communicants. But he celebrates his Call to Continuing Conversion and looks forward enormously to ‘coming home’ and being received into the full communion of the Catholic Church.
The ceremony was presided over by the Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols. Auxiliary Bishops of Westminster, Bishop John Arnold, Bishop Alan Hopes and Bishop George Stack assisted, as did the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, Fr Keith Newton.
His Grace rapturously declares that the ultimate truth of Jesus Christ is to be found in the Catholic Church. His Grace has been Protestant and Anglican, but increasingly it has been the One True Catholic faith that has appealed more and more. There is not only a unified sense of community in the spirit of the Church, but it is a rock – the Rock – in a world of shifting sand.
His Grace finds in the Sacrifice of the Mass a sense of the familiarity of coming home: it is like being born again. He understands that this decision will shock and displease as many of his communicants as it will surprise and delight. But he hopes, in a spirit of ecumenical agape, that we might all continue to walk with Him who will guide us into all truth.
